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Kasich, the Ohio governor running as a compassionate conservative, is mired at 3 per cent in the national polls. Given the first question of the third Republican debate — what is your greatest weakness? — Kasich ignored his own failings to deliver a scripted but impassioned cry about the flaws of the implausible schemes of the party’s most popular men.

“My great concern is that we are on the verge, perhaps, of picking someone who cannot do this job,” Kasich said.

Carson says he wants to eliminate Medicare, the popular health insurance program for seniors. “This stuff is fantasy,” Kasich said. Carson’s plan for a flat tax based on biblical tithing? “We’re just going to have a 10 per cent tithe and that’s how we’re going to fund the government?” Trump’s pledge to deport every illegal immigrant? “We’re going to ship 10 million Americans, or 10 million people, out of this country, leaving their children here in this country and dividing families?”

Kasich’s Last Reasonable Man plea played well with pundits observing the race with awed confusion. It is far from clear that it will help much in the polls. Trump’s hardline stance on immigration is wildly popular with an angry Republican base. So are low-tax schemes, even when the math doesn’t add up.

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And Trump came back strong against Kasich, using the opportunity to remind voters that Kasich was an executive at Lehman Bros., the Wall St. firm whose failure triggered the financial crisis. Trump concluded his rejoinder with one of his signature popularity-based insults.

Ben Carson, right, watches as Donald Trump speaks during the third Republican presidential debate at the University of Colorado in Boulder on Wednesday night. (Mark J. Terrill / AP)

“He was such a nice guy,” Trump said, “and he said, ‘Oh, I’m never gonna attack. But then his poll numbers tanked. That’s why he’s on the end (of the stage).” The crowd laughed with delight.

The debate was a disjointed affair in which Trump and Carson, far and away the leaders in the polls, were granted little speaking time for long stretches. The host, CNBC, might have been the biggest loser: its panellists asked meandering and confrontational questions scorned by the candidates and once booed loudly by the audience at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Ted Cruz, the Texas senator, drew the loudest cheer of the night with a time-tested Republican debate ploy: an angry rant against the media moderators.

“The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media,” Cruz said. “This is not a cage match.” Demanding substantive questions, he ignored his chance to answer the substantive question he had actually been asked.

For former Florida governor Jeb Bush, the flailing once-frontrunner, the debate offered another chance to salvage a campaign that has veered perilously toward the cliff. As in the first two debates, his awkward attempt at a standout moment fell flat.

Rather than attack Trump, Bush turned his sights this time on Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the better-spoken, fresher-faced candidate who has overtaken him in the polls and may soon overtake him as the favourite of the party’s moneyed establishment. Rubio, he said, has let hard-working Florida residents down by skipping hundreds of Senate votes to run for president.

“You should be showing up to work,” Bush said, “or just resign, and let somebody else take the job.”

Rubio was ready.

“Someone has convinced you that attacking me is going to help you …. It’s not,” he said dismissively.

Rubio, perhaps the smoothest communicator in the field, was just as adept at pivoting from a moderator’s critical questions about his history of financial woes, using the opening to implicitly contrast his family’s working-class background with the privilege of Bush and Trump.

“I didn’t inherit any money. My father was a bartender; my mother was a maid,” he said. He added: “I’m not worried about my finances. I’m worried about the finances of everyday Americans.”

Bush was outgunned even when he did relatively well. Asked for his views on the legality of immensely popular daily fantasy sports games, which may or may not constitute gambling, he earned laughs with a boast about his 7-0 record in his own football fantasy league.

But New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie used the question to take a principled conservative stand, getting a rousing cheer when he asked why the government would get involved in fantasy sports in the era of trillion-dollar debts and threats from Islamic terrorists.

“We’re talking about fantasy football?” he concluded incredulously.

Trump delivered a rare Republican attack on Super PACs, the opaque big-money fundraising entities, calling them “a disaster” and a “scam.” And he displayed his usual slippery flexibility, professing a willingness to abandon his resorts’ bans on guns. Stumbling briefly, he said he carries his own gun both “occasionally” and “sometimes a lot.”

“I like to be unpredictable,” he explained.

Trump was challenged late in the debate on a flat-out lie earlier in the debate about immigration. He denied he had ever criticized Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg, though he did so on his very own website. He betrayed no visible shame.

Carson, who has overtaken Trump in Iowa on the strength of his popularity with evangelicals, pleased the Christian right again when asked why he would sit on the board of Costco, a “gay-friendly” company, despite his opposition to same-sex marriage.

“I believe that our constitution protects everybody, regardless of their sexual orientation,” he said. “There is no reason why you can’t be perfectly fair to the gay community. They should not automatically assume because you believe that marriage is between one man and one woman that you are a homophobe. This is a myth that the left perpetrates on our society.”

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